On the subject of "holidays".
Guys: this is a post originally written by my super wonderful Aunt Kim regarding “Happy Holidays” and how much a fiasco political correctness has become in our society. Cut for length, but I really encourage you to at least take a gander at it.
Here is something I had posted on my LiveJournal ages ago. I lost interest in LJ rather quickly, but I still get emails about this old post (most of them saying “Thank You!) so I thought maybe I’d re-post it here!
November 29th, 2007
OK so driving up to Pennsylvania to visit my mom for Thanksgiving, I encountered some very nice people along the way, in toll-booths, checkout-counters, etc., who all said something very nice to me with a smile and every time they said it I got this horrible, nervous knot in my stomach and felt bad. Isn’t that pathetic? You want to know what it was they said? It was ... *cringing*... OK OK I can say it... it was (takes a deep breath): “Have a nice holiday.” (Covers solar plexus with crossed arms and ducks, looking nervously around for someone to yell “UGH ! People who use the word ‘holiday’ are just commie liberals pandering to political correctness and ought to have their arms ripped off and shoved up their .....!”)
Well after my initial shell-shocked reaction to their nice gesture, I always did manage to pull myself together and smile at them and reply “Thank you! Same to you!” Which when I was a kid I was taught was the correct response when anyone says something nice like that to you.
So with the HOLIDAYS coming up I thought I’d post my little (haha, if a novelette is “little”!) rant and get it out of my system. Holiday is NOT a bad word, people! Thanksgiving IS a holiday! So is Christmas, and New Years Day, and Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, and Yule or Winter Solstice. People who go around giving people a hard time for using the word Holiday ought to be beaten over the head with a plastic baby Jesus until they stop taking themselves so seriously!
When I was a kid we ALWAYS said “Happy Holidays” and this was LONG before the “political correctness” movement, back before anyone even dreamed up the phrase “politically correct” which, if I remember correctly, only came out in the early 90’s. We didn’t say it to be Politically Correct, we said it TO BE NICE! It was considered a nice thing to say to people in stores and in public - especially if we didn’t know if we’d see them before New Years and so we were wishing them both a Merry Christmas AND a Happy New Year, we’d just say “Holidays” so as to include both. NOW if some well-meaning person innocently lets that old good-will blessing slip out, there are a dozen fundamentalists behind them, and sometimes even the person they said it to, screeching “Rot in hell, you damned PC liberal!”
No, they don’t usually say it out loud that way, but it’s what they mean.
In later years when I got out of the little town I had grown up in, I got a job as a receptionist in a large-ish company. A gentleman was walking out of the lobby one afternoon and I cheerfully said to him, “You have a Merry Christmas, OK?” He very kindly said to me, “I am actually celebrating Hanukkah, but thank you anyway for the good wishes.” I was embarrassed for a second, but he continued to be nice, and we got into a very interesting conversation about how so many cultures on Earth have a holiday in mid-winter that involves lots of friends and family getting together and eating lots of good food. Turns out later I found out that this man was a very important friend of my boss and if he’d been one of those people who get all offended when someone expresses a different religion in their presence, he could have got me in trouble. But he didn’t.. he was a NICE PERSON!
And that’s my whole point here. It’s not about what you believe or don’t believe, and it’s not about Political Correctness. It’s about BEING NICE TO OTHER PEOPLE!!!
This isn’t rocket science, people. Bill and Ted summed it up in five simple words: Be Excellent To Each Other.*
A couple of years ago I was doing some Christmas shopping in my little home town. I thought it would be good to keep my money local if I could. So I went into this little antique shop and bought a - rather overpriced - knicknack my mom had shown interest in when she’d visited earlier that year. I paid for my purchase and as I was walking out of the store, I said to the owner, “You have a nice holiday, OK?” And this man rounded on me with rage in his eyes (he was literally trembling!) and read me the whole riot act about how we are all being bullied by the politically correct movement and everyone has to be afraid to use the word “Christmas” and this is a CHRISTIAN country, damn it, and we even have “In God We Trust” on our money and so on and so forth. I was a little intimidated by him at first and backed up, muttering, “Well, I wasn’t sure what holiday you might be celebrating and I wanted to include everyone....” and he went on to rant about how “We were here first so they should do as we do!” Meaning, I assumed, “them Jews” to which I got a little braver and replied, “I think we pretty much all came over on the same boats...” (don’t get me started about who was really here first!) and he kinda calmed down, then, and said, “I mean here, in Youngsville, we were here first...” and I said, well, yeah, he had a point, I guess, there are more Baptist churches in Youngsville than there are street corners (there really are! There are at least nine baptist churches here, and the population is only 300!) and I should have figured no one who is not at least a protestant would dare set foot in the town.
He mumbled on a little more until he ran out of steam about how he saw on the news that some church had put up a sign that said “Merry Christmas” and they were interviewing people who claimed to be offended by the sight of it. I’m sure the news crew deliberately went around looking for people who were offended by it and didn’t talk to the huge majority who either liked it or else just didn’t even care. The whole point of those “social interest” features is to get people all worked up, and it sure does work!
Mr. Shopkeeper, having been affected by all this media (and he probably got it from the pulpit every Sunday, too) thought I was bowing to the pressure to say “Holidays” instead of “Christmas” out of fear of offending some atheist liberal pagan Jew. But I had not said it out of any kind of fear or pressure. I had said it simply because, whatever he was celebrating, I sincerely and honestly wanted him to have a good one. And I didn’t deserve that kind of response!!!
So I escaped that very unpleasant encounter with my skin intact and needless to say I never shopped in that store again. Here’s the thing: It was not a matter of what that man believed or didn’t believe. It was a matter of whether he was a nice person or not. That man was NOT a nice person! (Tho’ now I have a feeling he actually treated all of his customers that way, because he went out of business this past summer.)
Here are some simple rules of thumb:
•
• If someone says “Happy Holidays” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Merry Christmas” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Hanukkah” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Kwanzaa” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy New Year” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Solstice” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Blessed Yule” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Holidays” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Merry Christmas” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Hanukkah” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Kwanzaa” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy New Year” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Solstice” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Blessed Yule” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
And yes, I do wish it were simpler like it seemed to be in the old days. I wish we could still have manger scenes on the lawns at courthouses. I also think it would be cool if we could display Stars of David in public places at Hanukkah time. I miss school plays where kids would dress up as Three Wise Men (I got to be the Christmas Star when I was in fourth grade!) I wish we could still do that, and still sing all the old traditional Christmas songs in school - including Silent Night (which I learned from a film strip projector - remember those? - in first grade) and I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. But I also think it would be cool if we could learn the songs of other faiths and cultures, too. So yes, while I would like to bring back the warmth and fun of the old Christmas season, I don’t exactly want to go back to “the way things used to be,” because I would also like to add more cultural and religious richness to our world than we permitted ourselves then.
Maybe what has happened here is simply a case of “what goes around, comes around.” The dominant religion in this country has spent so much time and effort trying to suppress the expression of other people’s religions, that now the same thing has bitten them on their own butts. The shoe is on the other foot, and they’re finding out how badly it pinches.
I guess humans mistakenly believe that having a religion automatically means being against other religions, so they feel it’s necessary to oppose the others, and to get offended when they see them expressed. (This includes atheists, by the way, whose “offense” at others’ expressions of their faiths started the whole PC movement to begin with!) But make no mistake: it is a HUMAN reaction to “get offended” by seeing other people’s faith expressed, it is NOT God’s reaction - any God’s, whatever God you may believe in. Not even the God of Abraham. (BTW people: God is not a name, it’s a job description. Even the God that Christians and Jews call “God” is not actually named “God.” He has a name - it’s Yaweh. We don’t use his name because sometime in the second or third century BC theologians got it into their heads that calling God by his name was disrespectful. Kind of like how kids aren’t supposed to call their parents by their names, but instead call them Mom and Dad. But to say that YOUR Dad, for instance, is the ONLY Dad that exists because “Dad” is his name, and there is clearly only one of him, and to furthermore believe that he’d get angry if some other kid called some other man “Dad” would be a little ridiculous, no?”)
Anyway, frankly, if I thought the God I worship would have a fit about me treating people of other religions with respect, I would start shopping for a more enlightened God. I mean, I won’t bow to Theological Correctness any more than I will to Political Correctness. I will try to choose my words and actions based on the simple question: Am I Being Excellent to Everyone? But anyway I don’t believe for a minute that any God, not even the God of Abraham, actually would get the least bit offended by someone showing respect for others’ faiths, or would punish one for doing so. If anything, showing respect is, I feel, the very thing, for instance, that Jesus Would Do. And if you’re concerned that showing respect would encourage them to continue to keep to a faith which - as your faith teaches you - is going to end up sending them to hell, then just remember that people are never won to faith by good arguments; they are won to faith by good people.
See Rules of Thumb above if you need a reminder how to tell a good person from one who needs to be beaten about the head and shoulders with a plastic menorah or a Yule log until they stop taking themselves so seriously.
Stepping down off my soapbox now and heading nervously out into the kind of world where it has become safer to just not say anything in public at all, because no matter what well-meaning good wish you speak, there is someone out there all wound up and ready to go off, who is going to get all on your case about it.
I will try not to let those kinds of poor souls affect me at all, and will just say whatever I want to say...whatever that is. Wish me luck. And good luck to you, too.
*Editors note: bolding is mine, for emphasis. And because I love Bill and Ted.
Here is something I had posted on my LiveJournal ages ago. I lost interest in LJ rather quickly, but I still get emails about this old post (most of them saying “Thank You!) so I thought maybe I’d re-post it here!
November 29th, 2007
OK so driving up to Pennsylvania to visit my mom for Thanksgiving, I encountered some very nice people along the way, in toll-booths, checkout-counters, etc., who all said something very nice to me with a smile and every time they said it I got this horrible, nervous knot in my stomach and felt bad. Isn’t that pathetic? You want to know what it was they said? It was ... *cringing*... OK OK I can say it... it was (takes a deep breath): “Have a nice holiday.” (Covers solar plexus with crossed arms and ducks, looking nervously around for someone to yell “UGH ! People who use the word ‘holiday’ are just commie liberals pandering to political correctness and ought to have their arms ripped off and shoved up their .....!”)
Well after my initial shell-shocked reaction to their nice gesture, I always did manage to pull myself together and smile at them and reply “Thank you! Same to you!” Which when I was a kid I was taught was the correct response when anyone says something nice like that to you.
So with the HOLIDAYS coming up I thought I’d post my little (haha, if a novelette is “little”!) rant and get it out of my system. Holiday is NOT a bad word, people! Thanksgiving IS a holiday! So is Christmas, and New Years Day, and Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, and Yule or Winter Solstice. People who go around giving people a hard time for using the word Holiday ought to be beaten over the head with a plastic baby Jesus until they stop taking themselves so seriously!
When I was a kid we ALWAYS said “Happy Holidays” and this was LONG before the “political correctness” movement, back before anyone even dreamed up the phrase “politically correct” which, if I remember correctly, only came out in the early 90’s. We didn’t say it to be Politically Correct, we said it TO BE NICE! It was considered a nice thing to say to people in stores and in public - especially if we didn’t know if we’d see them before New Years and so we were wishing them both a Merry Christmas AND a Happy New Year, we’d just say “Holidays” so as to include both. NOW if some well-meaning person innocently lets that old good-will blessing slip out, there are a dozen fundamentalists behind them, and sometimes even the person they said it to, screeching “Rot in hell, you damned PC liberal!”
No, they don’t usually say it out loud that way, but it’s what they mean.
In later years when I got out of the little town I had grown up in, I got a job as a receptionist in a large-ish company. A gentleman was walking out of the lobby one afternoon and I cheerfully said to him, “You have a Merry Christmas, OK?” He very kindly said to me, “I am actually celebrating Hanukkah, but thank you anyway for the good wishes.” I was embarrassed for a second, but he continued to be nice, and we got into a very interesting conversation about how so many cultures on Earth have a holiday in mid-winter that involves lots of friends and family getting together and eating lots of good food. Turns out later I found out that this man was a very important friend of my boss and if he’d been one of those people who get all offended when someone expresses a different religion in their presence, he could have got me in trouble. But he didn’t.. he was a NICE PERSON!
And that’s my whole point here. It’s not about what you believe or don’t believe, and it’s not about Political Correctness. It’s about BEING NICE TO OTHER PEOPLE!!!
This isn’t rocket science, people. Bill and Ted summed it up in five simple words: Be Excellent To Each Other.*
A couple of years ago I was doing some Christmas shopping in my little home town. I thought it would be good to keep my money local if I could. So I went into this little antique shop and bought a - rather overpriced - knicknack my mom had shown interest in when she’d visited earlier that year. I paid for my purchase and as I was walking out of the store, I said to the owner, “You have a nice holiday, OK?” And this man rounded on me with rage in his eyes (he was literally trembling!) and read me the whole riot act about how we are all being bullied by the politically correct movement and everyone has to be afraid to use the word “Christmas” and this is a CHRISTIAN country, damn it, and we even have “In God We Trust” on our money and so on and so forth. I was a little intimidated by him at first and backed up, muttering, “Well, I wasn’t sure what holiday you might be celebrating and I wanted to include everyone....” and he went on to rant about how “We were here first so they should do as we do!” Meaning, I assumed, “them Jews” to which I got a little braver and replied, “I think we pretty much all came over on the same boats...” (don’t get me started about who was really here first!) and he kinda calmed down, then, and said, “I mean here, in Youngsville, we were here first...” and I said, well, yeah, he had a point, I guess, there are more Baptist churches in Youngsville than there are street corners (there really are! There are at least nine baptist churches here, and the population is only 300!) and I should have figured no one who is not at least a protestant would dare set foot in the town.
He mumbled on a little more until he ran out of steam about how he saw on the news that some church had put up a sign that said “Merry Christmas” and they were interviewing people who claimed to be offended by the sight of it. I’m sure the news crew deliberately went around looking for people who were offended by it and didn’t talk to the huge majority who either liked it or else just didn’t even care. The whole point of those “social interest” features is to get people all worked up, and it sure does work!
Mr. Shopkeeper, having been affected by all this media (and he probably got it from the pulpit every Sunday, too) thought I was bowing to the pressure to say “Holidays” instead of “Christmas” out of fear of offending some atheist liberal pagan Jew. But I had not said it out of any kind of fear or pressure. I had said it simply because, whatever he was celebrating, I sincerely and honestly wanted him to have a good one. And I didn’t deserve that kind of response!!!
So I escaped that very unpleasant encounter with my skin intact and needless to say I never shopped in that store again. Here’s the thing: It was not a matter of what that man believed or didn’t believe. It was a matter of whether he was a nice person or not. That man was NOT a nice person! (Tho’ now I have a feeling he actually treated all of his customers that way, because he went out of business this past summer.)
Here are some simple rules of thumb:
•
• If someone says “Happy Holidays” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Merry Christmas” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Hanukkah” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Kwanzaa” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy New Year” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Solstice” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Blessed Yule” to you and you say “Thank you!” you are a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Holidays” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Merry Christmas” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Hanukkah” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Kwanzaa” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy New Year” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Happy Solstice” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
• If someone says “Blessed Yule” to you and you disapprove, you are not a nice person.
•
And yes, I do wish it were simpler like it seemed to be in the old days. I wish we could still have manger scenes on the lawns at courthouses. I also think it would be cool if we could display Stars of David in public places at Hanukkah time. I miss school plays where kids would dress up as Three Wise Men (I got to be the Christmas Star when I was in fourth grade!) I wish we could still do that, and still sing all the old traditional Christmas songs in school - including Silent Night (which I learned from a film strip projector - remember those? - in first grade) and I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. But I also think it would be cool if we could learn the songs of other faiths and cultures, too. So yes, while I would like to bring back the warmth and fun of the old Christmas season, I don’t exactly want to go back to “the way things used to be,” because I would also like to add more cultural and religious richness to our world than we permitted ourselves then.
Maybe what has happened here is simply a case of “what goes around, comes around.” The dominant religion in this country has spent so much time and effort trying to suppress the expression of other people’s religions, that now the same thing has bitten them on their own butts. The shoe is on the other foot, and they’re finding out how badly it pinches.
I guess humans mistakenly believe that having a religion automatically means being against other religions, so they feel it’s necessary to oppose the others, and to get offended when they see them expressed. (This includes atheists, by the way, whose “offense” at others’ expressions of their faiths started the whole PC movement to begin with!) But make no mistake: it is a HUMAN reaction to “get offended” by seeing other people’s faith expressed, it is NOT God’s reaction - any God’s, whatever God you may believe in. Not even the God of Abraham. (BTW people: God is not a name, it’s a job description. Even the God that Christians and Jews call “God” is not actually named “God.” He has a name - it’s Yaweh. We don’t use his name because sometime in the second or third century BC theologians got it into their heads that calling God by his name was disrespectful. Kind of like how kids aren’t supposed to call their parents by their names, but instead call them Mom and Dad. But to say that YOUR Dad, for instance, is the ONLY Dad that exists because “Dad” is his name, and there is clearly only one of him, and to furthermore believe that he’d get angry if some other kid called some other man “Dad” would be a little ridiculous, no?”)
Anyway, frankly, if I thought the God I worship would have a fit about me treating people of other religions with respect, I would start shopping for a more enlightened God. I mean, I won’t bow to Theological Correctness any more than I will to Political Correctness. I will try to choose my words and actions based on the simple question: Am I Being Excellent to Everyone? But anyway I don’t believe for a minute that any God, not even the God of Abraham, actually would get the least bit offended by someone showing respect for others’ faiths, or would punish one for doing so. If anything, showing respect is, I feel, the very thing, for instance, that Jesus Would Do. And if you’re concerned that showing respect would encourage them to continue to keep to a faith which - as your faith teaches you - is going to end up sending them to hell, then just remember that people are never won to faith by good arguments; they are won to faith by good people.
See Rules of Thumb above if you need a reminder how to tell a good person from one who needs to be beaten about the head and shoulders with a plastic menorah or a Yule log until they stop taking themselves so seriously.
Stepping down off my soapbox now and heading nervously out into the kind of world where it has become safer to just not say anything in public at all, because no matter what well-meaning good wish you speak, there is someone out there all wound up and ready to go off, who is going to get all on your case about it.
I will try not to let those kinds of poor souls affect me at all, and will just say whatever I want to say...whatever that is. Wish me luck. And good luck to you, too.
*Editors note: bolding is mine, for emphasis. And because I love Bill and Ted.